Our first announcement today is a new set of features that we call Search Options, which are a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier. Search Options helps solve a problem that can be vexing: what query should I ask?

Google, focusing on query refinement and elaboration? I’m all ears! In fact, eyes and ears–here is the video tour:

Well, on second thought, it’s a bit of a rehash of features they’d already rolled out, and that I personally didn’t find overwhelming (see here and here). Still, I’m pleased that their marketing language is embracing HCIR–that’s a big step for a company that has perhaps done more than anyone to emphasize the primacy of relevance ranking in the search interface. Even if they’re only taking baby steps at this point, I am cautiously optimistic that they will build on them.

I’m guessing it’s much harder for them to show old results than new ones, but of course that’s based on the supposition that their indexing approach is biased towards a small subset of their document collection. I posted a comment on Matt Cutts’s blog; perhaps he’ll shed light on the decision.